The Painted Veil is a novel by the British author W. Somerset Maugham. The title is a reference to Shelley's 1824 sonnet which begins "Lift not the painted veil which those who live / Call Life". The novel was serialized in the US in Cosmopolitan (November 1924 – March 1925).
Kitty Garstin, a pretty, upper-middle class debutante, squanders her youth amusing herself by living a social high life, during which her domineering mother attempts to arrange a "brilliant match" for her. By age 25, Kitty has flirted with and declined marriage proposals from dozens of prospective husbands. Her mother, convinced that her eldest daughter has "missed her market", urges Kitty to settle for the rather “odd” Walter Fane, a bacteriologist and physician, who declares his love for Kitty. In a panic that her much younger and less attractive sister Doris will upstage her by marrying first, Kitty consents to Walter's ardent marriage proposition with the words, "I suppose so". Shortly before Doris's much grander wedding, Kitty and Walter depart as newlyweds to his post in Hong Kong. What could go wrong?
The novel has been filmed three times, most recently in 2006 with Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Toby Jones, Anthony Wong Chau Sang, and Liev Schreiber in the leading roles.
William Somerset Maugham (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was known for his 32 plays, 20 novels, and numerous short stories. He was born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, schooled in England, and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897 but never practiced medicine, becoming instead a full-time writer. He named Guy de Maupassant as an early influence. Among his other notable novels: Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Cakes and Ale (1930), and The Razor's Edge (1944). Yet his work as a medical student in which he met the poorest working-class people profoundly touched him: "I was in contact with what I most wanted, life in the raw". In maturity, he recalled the value of his experiences: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief; I saw the dark lines that despair drew on a face."
During WW1, Maugham, who was fluent in French and German, worked for the British Secret Service in Switzerland then in the South Seas. He later drew on his experiences for stories published in the 1920s. Although primarily homosexual, he attempted to conform to some extent with the norms of his day, being acutely conscious of the fate of Oscar Wilde, whose arrest and imprisonment took place when Maugham was in his early twenties. A three-year affair with Syrie Wellcome, who was married at the time, produced their daughter, Liza. Syrie divorced her husband and married Maugham in 1917. The ill-fated marriage lasted for twelve years.
Looking back, Maugham described his early attempts to be heterosexual as the greatest mistake in his life. Before, during and after his marriage, Maugham's principal partner was a younger man, Gerald Haxton. Together he and Haxton made extended visits to Asia, the South Seas and other destinations; Maugham gathered material for his fiction wherever they went; many of his works are set in Asia or the Pacific.
